Brad Pitt was going to have two movies coming out in the early fall…but no longer. Alejandro Gonzales Innaritu ‘s Babel (Paramount Vantage, 10.6) is the keeper and Andrew Dominik‘s The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Warner Bros., 9.15) is not. Warner Bros. publicity confirmed today that they’re delaying Jesse James‘s release until early 2007. This is being done, I’ve been told, “due to Brad Pitt’s shooting schedule for Oceans 13.” What…he’s going to be too busy making an ensemble film with 12 other guys to find time to do publicity for a couple of weekends? Sure thing. I can guess what’s actually happening, but when I get something solid I’ll pass it along. If any industry readers can fill me in (anonymously, of course), the usual confidences apply.

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This one-sheet for Mel Gibson‘s Apocalypto (Disney, 12.8) really puts the zap on my head…something like that. Handsome, striking, quietly haunting…an image that sticks and stays. Reactions?

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An amusing, well-written, for-some-reason very believable (as far as this stuff goes) AICN review of The Break-Up from “Masswyrm”. I believe it because the guy knows how to write, because he has a straight-arrow tone of voice, and because he says he’s married (and sounds married). The Break-Up tracking may be upticking (I’m now hearing opening weekend may hit the high 20s) but between this guy’s review and Brian Lowry‘s in Variety, this film looks effin’ doomed with the just-make-me-laugh crowd. And maybe, just maybe something that maladjusted hombres like myself might find a way to get into. I love these two portions: (a) “I just can’t get over the fact that this film is being released...

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My read on Warner Bros.’s decision to release Superman Returns two days earlier — on Wednesday, 6.28 instead of Friday, 6.30 — is that the marketing cats are figuring Bryan Singer’s humungously costly film will be pretty much over and done by the time Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest comes along on July 7th, so why not go for the moolah by stretching out the 4th of July weekend as much as possible? I haven’t called my pallies with the tracking reports, but the general expectation is that Superman Returns will pull in…I don’t know what to write here. Those angry Ain’t It Cool guys have been gunning for this film for months now. Will geek sentiments matter? Do geeks ever matter when it comes to huge tenpolers? Is a figure of $140 to $145 million over the six-day weekend on-the-money, optimistic, a bit short…what? What are HE readers expecting? How interested?

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I didn’t even watch the Indiana Jones DVD box set that came out in October 2003, so you can bet your ass I never would’ve paid for a limited deluxe “Indiana Jones Trilogy” DVD~set inside a “leather-bound box with additional deleted scenes, making-of docs, two large trade paperbacks and several CDs worth of John Williams’ scoring”…no effin’ way. But had this package been released I would have probably tried to score a freebie from Paramount Home Video or, failing that, tried to convince my homies at West L.A.’s Laser Blazer to let me rent one for a weekend. In any case, this is a good rant by...

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Phillip Noyce‘s Hotstuff, a stirring South African political drama based on the true story of Patrick Chamusso, an Average Joe laborer who became radicalized under the boot of apartheid in the early 1980s, is now being called Catch-a-Fire, according to a press release sent out by Noyce’s office about a filmmaking workshop that Noyce will hold for budding East African filmmakers in mid-August. One presumes that Hotstuff, a term used by an anti-terrorist Afrikaner policeman (Tim Robbins ) to describe Chamusso (Derek Luke), was dumped because of the sexual connotation. Catch-a-Fire will be released via Focus Features in October, and will most likely debut at the Toronto Film Festival.

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U.S. journalist to native Parisian journalist: “I’m in Paris for the next three or four days. Any screenings happening tonight, Thursday and Friday? I need to see something new…running out of stuff to write about.” Native Parisian journalist to U.S. journalist: “I’ll be at the office in one hour and will check if there is something worth seeing. This is traditionally a slow week in terms of screenings, but there may be something.”

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The full line-up for the Los Angeles Film Festival (6.22 through 7.2) won’t be announced until 5.31, but I’m trusting that John Scheinfeld‘s Who Is Harry Nillson (and Why Is Everybody Talkin’ About Him)?, which I saw at the Santa Barbara Film Festival earlier this year, will be included. (It’s been announced as an offering at next month’s Seattle Film Festival, with showings scheduled at Seattle’s Egyptian on 6.15 and 6.17). The LAFF roster so far includes The Devil Wears Prada , Little Miss Sunshine, Quinceanera and Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man.

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“Driven largely by smaller markets, RV” — the laugh-free, critically-dismissed Barry Sonnenfeld family comedy starring Robin Williams — “turned out to have the best legs of any major studio release this year, especially stronger than those of Mission: Impossible 3” — from Ben Fritz and Dave McNary‘s 5.30 Variety story, which isn’t so much about M:I:3‘s inability to crack $140 million domestic as the age-old axiom that there’s no accounting for taste.

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Another pothole and a tough journey for director Baz Luhrman , who’s lost the services of leading man Russell Crowe in a forthcoming Australian period epic that reportedly still has Nicole Kidman on-board in the female lead role. I was intrigued when I first read about Luhrman’s stated intention to shoot the film’s big scenes in the organic, old-fashioned Lawrence of Arabia way, with a minimal use of CGI. Variety‘s Michael Fleming is reporting that Heath Ledger has “passed” as Crowe’s replacement, despite a recent N.Y. Post report saying he’s in.

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French butchers and their customers are more fully acquainted with their gastronomical savorings — Wednesday, 5.31.06, 8:05 am.

(a) French apartment-building doors outweigh American ones by, I would guess, a scale or 5 or 6 to 1, and they’re a helluva lot taller — Tuesday, 5.30.06, 4:45 pm; (b) I’m presuming that I missed the news and/or reviews of a U.S. staging of Woody Allen’s Adulterers or I’m forgetting what the U.S. title was, but the play was published in France in early ’05 and a presentation is happening in Paris in late June — Wednesday, 5.31.06, 9:20 am; (c) backside of the old

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“I have always had a voice and always known I could sing, but I was too shy to let it come out. I think that is the hardest thing you can do, to sing in front of people. When I finally let go and did it, I realized it is what I am most talented at and what I love to do the most” — Paris Hilton

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There are more to movies than just form — content counts for a lot. I could list 100 well-regarded movies off the top of my head, docs and features alike, that you could arguably call boring or so-whatty in the way they’re shaped and/or paced, and yet they’re compelling as hell because of the current inside them. And yet here’s a columnist saying Al Gore and Davis Guggenheim‘s An Inconvenient Truth is “boring” and “not a movie“, “feels like it was pretty much assembled, not directed“, “Castor Oil is good for...

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Two witnesses have told me that Pan’s Labyrinth received the longest standing ovation of any film that played at Cannes when it showed last Saturday night. And now Salon‘s Andrew O’Heir is calling it “hands down the most exciting and original film I’ve seen here, and the one that had me in tears during its final scenes. Mexican director Guillermo del Toro is best known as the director of such fanboy classics as Hellboy, Mimic and Blade 2, which are cool enough in their way. Pan’s Labyrinth is something else again, and something far more powerful and original. Combining a fully convincing fantasy universe (drawn from a lifelong obsession with classic fairy tales) with a completely realistic story about the endgame of the Spanish Civil...

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For me, the Shohei Imamura film that seeped in deeper than the others was The Ballad of Narayama. The 1983 film is concisely summed up in this IMDB sentence: “In a small village in a valley everyone who reaches the age of 70 must leave the village and go to a certain mountain top to die.” Not what I’d call an enjoyable or soothing film, but an unforgettably strong one. I’m mentioning this because of the news of Mr. Imamura’s death from cancer, at age 79.

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A sublime little Italian place on rue Lepic, mainly frequented by the Montmartre locals and almost directly across from the apartment building where Vincent Van Gogh lived with his brother Theo (54 rue Lepic) from 1886 to 1887 — 5.29.06, 5:55 pm.

And (a) there aren’t enough blue doors on the front of apartment buildings in the U.S. — Monday, 5.29.06, 4:45 pm; (b) rue Lepic facing west in the late evening — Monday, 5.29.06, 11:25 pm; (c) menu at another Italian place in Montmartre — Monday, 5.30.06, 5:45 pm; (d) remnant of Monday evening’s dinner at an African place — Monday, 5.29.06, 10:45 pm; (e)

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L.A. Times writer Deborah Netburn delivers a sum-up of Marie-Antoinette reactions, including one from yours truly.

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Director Clint Eastwood has promised that Flags Of Our Fathers and Red Sun, Black Sand, which will both hit screens later this year, “will attempt to show for the first time the suffering of both sides during 36 days of fighting in early 1945 that turned Iwo Jima into a flattened wasteland. He describes Red Sun, shot in Japanese and with a largely Japanese cast, as his attempt to understand the country’s soldiers. ‘I think those soldiers deserve a certain amount of respect,’ he said. ‘I feel terrible for both sides in that war and in all wars. A lot of innocent people get sacrificed. It’s not about winning or losing, but mostly about the interrupted lives of young people. These men deserve to be seen, and heard from.’” — Justin McCurry in Tokyo, writing for the Guardian in a piece than ran two days ago.

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You can now scroll down through the entire present-month’s output (in this instance, May’s) by clicking on “Choose Month” in the search engine just above “Discland”. I’m mentioning this only because you couldn’t access all of May in one fell swoop until yesterday. Thanks again to the tireless Jon Rahoi of San Francisco for putting this function in.

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Yesterday’s Omen forum was fairly interesting. What about Michael Mann‘s Miami Vice? Here’s the trailer…watch it and tell us what you’re thinking deep down. Does it look like $180 million or $125 million? Impossible to gauge, obviously, but the word “priceless” could also apply. For me, an urban-based Mann film is a near-guarantee of a first-rate, high-style mood piece. Unless he’s wildly off his game, I anticipate seeing this thing three or four times.

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Such is the deep-dish appeal of black-and-white CinemaScope (i.e., 2.35 to 1) films, especially when they’ve been well-mastered for DVD, that even the relatively mediocre ones like The Longest Day stir my interest. Especially with this verdict from DVD Savant that says Fox’s Cinema Classics Collection DVD of the film, which came out almost two weeks ago, is “a great improvement over their previous non-enhanced transfer.”

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The comments that came in yesterday about The Omen (20th Century Fox, 6.6) show that HE readers are down on it. But something tells me that Average Joe moviegoers are going to give it a $20 million-plus opening . It might die the second weekend (if it’s what I think it might be, I think it’s reasonable to predict that it will die 11 days in), but it didn’t cost very much to make, and there’s something about the novelty of that 6.6.06 opening that people may get into, or are into already.

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Columbia Pictures has hired DaVinci Code screenwriter Akiva Goldsman to adapt Dan Brown’s ‘s “Angels and Demons”, another complex European potboiler about brainy Harvard professor of religious symbology Robert Langdon (i.e., Tom Hanks‘ DaVinci character) uncovering a dark plot. A Guardian story says that “no deals have yet been reached for Hanks and director Ron Howard to work on the film, but it is understood that both would have first refusal of the film.” Earth to Guardian: Hanks and Howard won’t come within ten city blocks of this thing. Their careers weren’t hurt by The DaVinci Code, but those $320 million worldwide DaVinci bucks aside, they sure as shit weren’t enhanced either. It’s...

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You have to look askance considering the source, but Life & Style Weekly reported towards the end of the Cannes Film Festival (when I wasn’t paying attention, for two dozen or so reasons) that there’s more trouble on the TomKat front. I don’t usually get into this stuff, but Katie’s reported “you can’t stop me!” quote struck me as mildly funny. Why, I can’t exactly say…but I smirked. The item comes by way of Jeannete Walls‘s MSNBC gossip column.

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Newsvine is reporting that Blade Runner fans are going to be hustled by Warner Home Video into purchasing two more DVD versions of Ridley Scott‘s 1982 future-noir. The item isn’t written as clearly as it should be, but it seems to say that Scott’s “director’s cut”, which first appeared on DVD in 1997, is “being restored and remastered for a brief DVD reissue in September.” Four months later, or sometime in December ’06 or January ’07, this version will be “deleted” (i.e., withdrawn from the market) and replaced by a 25th anniversary “final cut”, which Warner Home Video is billing as Scott’s “definitive new version” of the film.

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I presume the rights have already been optioned or bought, but here’s an ideal source for a very strong, possibly very commercial and perhaps even award-calibre Ziyi Zhang movie that could be theoretically helmed by Ang Lee or Wong Kar Wai. It’s basically an emotional wartime diary, initially serialized in newspapers and recently published in book form, about a real-life North Vietnamese female doctor named Dang Thuy Tram who was killed at age 27 on a Vietnam battlefield in 1970. Seth Mydans‘s Herald Tribune article doesn’t mention the title (weird), but the diary has become a best-seller in Vietnam, and if the...

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I didn’t get to see all the highly-rated Cannes films, but for what it’s worth I agree completely with L.A. Times film critic Kenneth Turan’s statement that “perhaps the best of the slighted films [among the Cannes Film Festival award-winners]” was Guillermo del Toro‘s Pan’s Labyrinth. But as del Toro told me last Thursday evening, Labyrinth‘s accomplishment was simply being shown in Cannes, given the snobbish attitudes that have long prevailed about films with fantasy-and-FX elements, and that a possible award was never realistically in the cards. “The winners have already been spoken for,” del Toro declared. Turan, by the way, has made a small error in describing del Toro as “the Mexican writer-director of...

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Tracking on The Omen (20th Century Fox, 6.6.06) is expected to uptick this week (as all films do the closer you get to their opening day), but it wasn’t looking very good a week and a half ago. What are the gut attitudes among HE readers? We’ve all seen the trailer and developed a sense of it. Are devil movies over or…? Is there any intrigue in John Moore trying to re-jigger the Richard Donner original (which seems to have been more or less the plan)? How comfortable is everyone with Liev Schreiber playing Gregory Peck, and Julia Styles as Lee Remick? I for one am looking forward to Mia Farrow playing Damian’s nanny-nurturer-enabler…her first villain role, I believe. The more replies, the better.

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“Newspapers, which increased rates for movie advertising as other categories fell apart after the dot-com bust, may be partly to blame for the prospect of a paperless movie industry. ‘I know everyone is trying to make it come true because the cost of print ads could be considered extortion in some jurisdictions,’ said Mark Cuban, who founded 2929 Entertainment, which produces, distributes and exhibits a variety of films. ‘Every distributor wants to find the best promotional mix away from traditional media and get a far greater bang for their buck,” Mr. Cuban said.” — from David Carr‘s N.Y. Times piece about two and a half topics — the changing movie-marketing landscape, the ongoing animus...

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